EDITORIAL: The people of West Alabama find courage

Thursday

May 1, 2014 at 7:00 PMMay 1, 2014 at 7:22 PM

Those who have spent enough years here know the feeling. They might not know how to describe it, but they know it when they feel it. And when those people stepped out of their houses Monday morning, three years and one day after the deadliest storm in Tuscaloosa’s history, they knew it felt like severe weather.

Those who have spent enough years here know the feeling. They might not know how to describe it, but they know it when they feel it. And when those people stepped out of their houses Monday morning, three years and one day after the deadliest storm in Tuscaloosa’s history, they knew it felt like severe weather.Of course, many had already learned from the news media that a troubling line of storms was on its way from Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. The fact that it wasn’t likely to be that once-every-40-years event didn’t make them feel a lot better.Post-traumatic stress disorder isn’t limited to soldiers who have experienced too many of war’s horrors. Storms have a way of scarring survivors, and it all becomes very real when severe weather takes aim at West Alabama.When the time came to head to cellars and safe rooms or just to the strongest place in the house this week, how many people found their thoughts drifting back to April 27, 2011? Some neighborhoods had celebrated, only the day before, their comeback from the storm. How many wondered if it was happening all over again?Tornadoes are a fact of life in West Alabama. Just ask the people in the Taylorville community, on Bear Creek Road and in Skyland Park who have been hit more than once. If you live here, you’re going to deal with tornadoes, just as coastal residents live with hurricanes and Californians coexist with earthquakes.People who live here learn to accept that. They take the necessary precautions and make the necessary preparations. But that still doesn’t make living through storm season here easy.We usually equate courage with heroism or being willing to stand up for what is right and just. But it takes a different kind of courage to come back out of that basement after the storms have passed and go on with life. It’s the kind of courage that many ordinary West Alabama residents found late Monday night. It is the resolve that brought West Alabama back from the devastation of April 27, 2011, and why it endures.